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The second full Sailor Moon Crystal soundtrack was released on July 27th in Japan. This features music which is mostly from the Infinity arc of Sailor Moon Crystal, referred to as Season III in Japan. This is a 2 CD set which is mostly instrumental music though TV sized versions of the season’s opening and closing themes are also included. The CD can be purchased online through sites like Amazon Japan for 3,240 yen, which is about $32 US. This may seem expensive for a CD soundtrack but this is a pretty standard price in Japan. The first soundtrack was released on iTunes for only $18. No indication yet as to if and when this might happen for this release.

The packaging looks great. As with the last release we have a stained glass window style art piece. This one features Sailor Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Saturn, four of the central characters of the season. The discs themselves feature images of their guardian planets. Disc 1 shows what I deduce must be Uranus and Neptune and disc 2 shows Pluto and Saturn. Note of course that since the early 90s when the Sailor Guardians were originally created Pluto is no longer a planet so it’s really a planet and a dwarf planet on the second disc.

Included is a short booklet which appears to have a track listing and some interviews. Have I mentioned I don’t speak Japanese? That means I also don’t read Japanese. Looks nice enough! I’ve included photos below for anyone who can read that.

The CDs themselves contain music you’ve likely already heard in the series. While it is advertised as music from “Season III” that does not mean that this is only new music. A lot of the tracks seem to be repeats of music we’ve heard before in the first 26 episodes of Sailor Moon Crystal and thus would have already been released in the first Sailor Moon Crystal Original Soundtracks. There’s still a lot of new music, mostly that related to the new characters such as Haruka, Michiru, Setsuna and Hotaru as well as their super powered counterparts and the villains the Death Busters and Witches 5. Yasuharu Takanashi has been the music composer for the entire series so the new music sounds like the old music. The music in this series is great, as it has always been. I feel that the animation this season was a vast improvement and the solid soundtrack complements it nicely.

The TV sized versions of the opening and closing themes are a nice addition. This includes three versions of the new opening theme In Love With the New Moon and the three ending themes. The first, Eternal Eternity, is sung by the voices of Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune, Junko Minagawa and Sayaka Ohara. The second is Maiden’s Advice, sung by Misato Fukuen, the voice of Chibiusa. The third is Only Eternity Brings the Two Together, sung by Kenji Nojima, the voice of Tuxedo Mask. We’ve already gotten full length versions of all of these in the individual CD singles so these are not repeated on this release.

I would recommend fans pick up this release if they have the means and interest to import it. It’s a good way to support the show and these kinds of releases. If it comes out on iTunes later that would be a good alternative way to purchase it, avoiding import costs and having a generally lower price tag. If you just don’t want to pay for it I’m sure you can find it online somewhere.

Keep reading for more pictures of the packaging including photos of all pages of the included booklet.

A second Sailor Moon Crystal soundtrack will be released in Japan on July 27th. This 2 CD soundtrack is called “Sailor Moon Crystal Official Soundtracks II”. Why the plural in soundtracks? I don’t know. A sound track refers to the track on a film which includes the music as opposed to dialogue and sound effects. What we call a soundtrack was once referred to as the music from the sound track of a movie. In that sense we really are just referring to the one track but we also talk about tracks on a CD which is a totally different thing. None of these things are actual tracks. There’s no 8 track or record or even a film real medium to Sailor Moon Crystal. A track is just a concept we use to refer to something which exists as computer files on hard drives and CDs. We don’t really mean the sound track of a movie when we say Soundtrack anymore. Anyway I’m ranting. I’ll give them a pass for being really Japanese.

You can pre-order the CD from online retailers such as Amazon Japan and CD Japan for as little as 3000 yen, about $30. This is more than the singles we’ve seen before because this is a full 2 CD set with background music from the entire season. Also included are TV sized versions of all of the opening and ending themes heard in the Infinity arc. A track listing is on the Sailor Moon official site. Here’s an English track listing I got through Google Translate with some help from a translation by Miss Dream!